School Districts Are Getting Tougher on Illegal Students Who Come From Other Places

By TAMAR LEWIN

Published: April 20, 1997

It's crackdown time in Morrisville, Pa.: this summer, in an effort to stop students from trickling across the state line from New Jersey, the school board will require all students in the district to re-enroll and prove their residency.

And if that doesn't do the trick, the board in the 1,050-student suburban district near Trenton has also voted to award a $500 bounty to any school security guard who identifies, and turns in, an out-of-town student illegally attending the local schools.

''When school lets out and you see a lot of cars with out-of-state license plates picking children up, that's a problem,'' said Stephen Worob, treasurer of the Morrisville board and a leading supporter of the new policy. ''Another board member and I followed some over the border, on a kind of fact-finding mission. We're convinced that there are a substantial number of out-of-district kids in our schools illegally.''

The bounty payment may be unique to Morrisville. But as American society generally becomes more hostile to outsiders -- witness the backlash against immigration -- many school districts are taking a tougher line on families who illegally enroll their children in school districts where they do not pay taxes.

Usually, it is affluent suburban districts with reputations for educational excellence that guard their borders most zealously, but some urban districts, too, have discovered outsiders enrolling illegally at specialized or magnet schools.

In New York City, it was still news last year when two suburban youngsters were found to be attending Public School 41.

But on Long Island, many Nassau County school districts routinely spend much time and effort weeding out students from Queens by requiring re-registration, hiring private detectives or making home visits. In January, in the first such case on Long Island, a couple from Far Rockaway, Queens, were charged with criminal fraud for enrolling their 12-year-old son in Lawrence Middle School. The charges were based on a five-month investigation that grew out of a tip to a school registration phone line that the Lawrence district set up last year.

''I think what's driving this is that in the last two or three years, all kinds of school districts have come under more pressure to account for every dollar and every kid than in years past,'' said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the largest urban school systems.

In Ohio earlier this year, a single mother who drove a bus for the Cleveland school board was sent to jail for five days for illegally sending her kindergarten son to school in Euclid, a nearby suburb.

There are no good statistics on how many students, nationwide, enroll illegally in schools outside their own districts. But the New Jersey School Board Association estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 students in that state alone enroll illegally in suburban districts to avoid school in their poor urban areas.

According to the Education Commission of the States, 14 states have adopted legislation that either requires or encourages school districts to accept children from elsewhere in the state. Even in those states, however, districts are generally allowed to set limits and rules on how many, and which, out-of-district students they will accept, based on the openings available.

And in most states, districts can ban out-of-district students. ''Over all, on the state level, I'd say the trend is toward school choice,'' said Kathy Christie, information coordinator of the commission. ''But the wealthier school districts tend to be very concerned about out-of-district students trying to come in.''

Given the mix of tighter financing, crowded classrooms and parents' increasing sense of urgency about getting their children into good schools, education lawyers and school boards say that student residency questions seem to be arising more frequently, especially in suburban districts near struggling big-city school systems.

An Illinois law that took effect earlier this year makes illegal school registration a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail, a $500 fine and tuition reimbursement.

''Our hope is that the new law will provide some type of chilling effect on those who are undermining the system by falsely enrolling their children and not paying their share,'' said State Representative James Durkin, a chief sponsor of the law.

Mr. Durkin said the legislation had been spurred by complaints from his constituents, in a district that includes Oak Park, River Forest and other affluent suburbs just outside the Chicago city limits.

''Whenever I went to forums in my district, I would hear a great deal of concern about the number of students from Chicago falsifying their addresses,'' he said. ''In a most basic sense, it's a theft from the people who provide the funds. My constituents would tell me they were paying incredibly high local tax bills of $5,000 to $8,000 to support their schools, while these district jumpers were getting a free ride.''

Many school officials, echoing Mr. Durkin's feelings, see the issue as simply a matter of fairness to insure that only those who pay for the district's services get them.

''We have a wonderful educational program, tops in technology, with quality staff and small class size,'' said Elizabeth Fineberg, the superintendent of the Morrisville district. ''But we're only staffed for the number of children we're supposed to have in the district. We don't want to have to give less to our students. So we have worked very hard, and made every effort, to keep illegal students out. In past years, we've put out 10 or 12 students a year.''

Like many districts nationwide, Morrisville used to allow out-of-district students to attend its schools if they paid tuition. But it ended that program several years ago.

And this summer, said Mr. Worob, the board treasurer, the district will require every family to re-enroll, by requiring four proofs of residency, such as a utility bill or driver's license, and three proofs of identity. Anyone who is not the parent of the child being registered will also have to show proof of legal guardianship, he said, and other checks are being devised for divorced families with dual custody when only one parent lives in Morrisville.

But others say the number of students trying to sneak across the lines from poor neighborhoods in big cities into richer suburban schools is a powerful indicator of the poor-quality education offered in many cities.

They argue that it is not good social policy to criminalize parents' efforts to get their children into better schools -- efforts prompted by a lack of resources and a commitment to a good education, rather than by any malicious intent.

''If this country has gotten itself into a situation where we criminalize parents for searching out the education they want for their kids, we're going in the wrong direction,'' said Mr. Casserly of the urban schools coalition.

And many are troubled by the undertone of racial inequality: it is no accident, they say, that the policies tend to fall most harshly on poor black parents who cannot afford either out-of-district tuition or private school, women like Judy Kincaid, the 36-year-old Cleveland school bus driver who went to jail for sending her 5-year-old son, Quenten, to school in Euclid, Ohio.

''I put my child in the Euclid school system because I wanted him to have a better life and a better education,'' Ms. Kincaid told reporters when her case was being heard.

There was good reason for Ms. Kincaid to think the Euclid schools might be better for her son: Euclid has smaller classes, a lower dropout rate and a higher graduation rate than the troubled Cleveland schools. For Ms. Kincaid, who gave the authorities a false address, reporting that she lived with her son's aunt, the difference came down to something simpler and more tangible: in Euclid, Quenten got his own workbook, while his Cleveland kindergarten uses photocopied work sheets.

Last month, Ms. Kincaid lost her job with the Cleveland school board, said a spokesman for the schools, who said the dismissal was related to her driving record, not the district jumping. Ms. Kincaid, who now has an unlisted telephone, could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Kincaid, the first parent caught by Euclid's new enforcement policy, was confronted after a tip from a school bus driver who saw that Quenten got into a car each day when the driver dropped him off.

''The Kincaid case was our first one,'' said Patrick Newkirk, a retired detective from the Euclid Police Department who was hired by the district as a full-time residency officer in October. ''But we've referred five other fraud charges to the city prosecutor since then. And there's a lot more people we've found who registered legally, then moved, but didn't take their kids out of our schools. Those we just tell to withdraw.''